If one were forced to watch a movie adaptation of
a video game, one could do much,
much
worse than Doom. The 1993 computer game was revolutionary (if you're
into knowing that kind of thing), but the movie is simply another no-brainer
shoot-'em-up. If you've played the game and are looking for a fair adaptation,
look elsewhere, and if you're looking for a well-made action flick, also look
elsewhere. The unsophisticated plot of the game has a single Marine facing off
against demons in hell, but the adaptation has a group of Marines facing off
against partially-mutated scientists who run directly into gunfire. Is it me or
do most game-based movies end up like this? Let's face it, good games do not
make good movies and vice versa; they are two completely different media. Video
games depend upon giving players an interactive experience, whereas movies are
completely non-interactive. Obvious, yes, and yet here's another example. Despite these inherent flaws, for a brainless, gory romp through a scientific
research facility on Mars, Doom has its moments.

We open on Mars—barren and lifeless, with the
exception of Olduvai Research Station somewhere on the surface. Something
besides the researchers is there, and in the prologue, a group of them are
slaughtered as they try to escape. When something goes wrong on Mars, of course
the only people to call in are the Marines. Sarge (The Rock) is the head of the
Rapid Response Tactical Squad, whose job it is to take the portal from Earth to
the research facility and neutralize the threat with extreme prejudice. The
squad is the usual one-dimension bunch: Goat (Ben Daniels), the creepy one, The
Kid (Al Weaver), the new guy, Grimm (Karl Urban), the one whom Sarge doesn't
want to go but who goes anyway, and the rest. When they arrive, Sarge orders
the portal closed, and Grimm begins to think perhaps it wasn't such a good idea
to go after all when he discovers his estranged sister Samantha (Rosamund Pike)
has her own orders to retrieve vital research data with the squad's help. The
threat, needless to say, is a bit more challenging than Sarge thought, and soon,
his team slowly turns from hunting the strange creatures infiltrating the
station to becoming them themselves.

Supposedly, the creatures are the result of the
mixing of an extra chromosome with an unmapped part of the human genome that
theoretically may hold the soul. In practice, they look and act for the most
part like your typical movie zombies. Well, what you can see of them, that is. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts have filmed
the movie with a continuous level of murkiness—in moments to the point of
incomprehension. The movie is so dark that the eventual bursts of gunfire are
almost blinding. And there's no shortage of firepower. The movie contains a
weapon called the BFG, which has a technical name, but it's best to think of it
in terms of the first initial standing for "big," the last one for "gun," and
the middle one, well, use your imagination. Essentially a big blue blob fires
into the air and melts away anything in its path. With such weaponry, one would
assume the job would be easy, but instead, our heroes make the typical dumb
moves of wandering around alone in dark places, just waiting to get picked off
by the monsters hiding throughout the facility.

Somewhere along the line, things get even rougher
for the Marines, as Sarge takes his orders to the extreme. You see, not
everyone who is attacked by the mutants turns into one; it all depends on the
content of a person's genetic soul. The resulting moral dilemma faced by the
troop is a pleasant surprise in a movie that seems to be focused on loud noises
and BFGs, and it gives The Rock the chance for a malicious turn—another
surprising move. Screenwriters Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick even give him a
great, winking exit line that unfortunately doesn't end up being his exit line,
but the point remains, the movie takes a few unexpected turns that keep it from
progressing on tedious, bullet-ridden autopilot. Eventually, of course, the
movie devolves into an extended first person sequence that plays like a haunted
house and is only present because fans of the game will be expecting as much. Why the guy in the wheelchair ends up transforming into the most grotesque
creature of the bunch is something left for us to decide, I suppose.

The ending credit sequence
perhaps sums up the majority of the movie, as the names of the people involved
are destroyed shooting gallery style as they scroll onto screen (if I remember
correctly, the names of the screenwriters are left unharmed). There are video
games out there that could reasonably be turned into movies. Doom shows,
once again, that most of them, though, are best left in their original form,
allowing people to get their visceral thrills in the way they're accustomed—with
a control pad.